The first shot was good, clean, a chest hit, surely puncturing the animal’s lung, possibly piercing the heart. And still, the big bull ran, bellowing as it bounded through the trees, heading for the old logging road. It wasn’t much of a road at all, just a two-track, and very few people knew about it-most of them dead. His brother, Carlos, only had it plowed or graded for “special occasions.”

It all happened far too quickly for Silas to do anything but bear witness. He heard the animal cry, a horrifying, sorrowful squall, but by the time he’d reached a clearing near the road, following both the elk’s tracks and the blood trail, events had already been set in motion. The first thing he noted, setting aside a rising anger at the sight, was that the two-track had been freshly plowed. The foot of snow they’d received overnight-nothing compared to the two more they were supposed to get over the next few days-had already been cleared from the narrow road.

The elk had bolted across the gravel path, not afraid or cautious of anything that looked like a road this far from civilization, and probably too weak from the arrow to jump far out of the way of the oncoming vehicle. Instead, it had tumbled sideways onto the hood of the BMW, its huge rack-calcified this time of year and sharpened to dangerous points on tree bark-

shattering the glass, puncturing the air bag, and skewering the driver of the vehicle to his seat.

The other airbag had either malfunctioned or was nonexistent, because the passenger had gone airborne through the windshield, his body sprawled over that of the elk on the hood, limp and unmoving. There was so much blood Silas couldn’t tell from an immediate assessment which was human and which was elk. But the elk was still alive, the arrow rising out of its side as it struggled to free itself, the pulling and tugging of its head making the driver do a bloody dance in his seat.